“Rookie Blue” recap (4.13): Glad You Came

Previously on Rookie Blue, GAIL AND HOLLY MADE OUT AND IT WAS AWESOME. Oh, also, Oliver got kidnapped by a crazy guy with an axe to grind.

Speaking of Oliver, he has been unceremoniously shoved in the trunk of his own squad car by aforementioned crazy guy named Ford. Ford finds the tracking device in the car and tosses into a cornfield, driving off again with poor Oliver still in the boot.

In another squad car, Andy gets a call from Nick, who tells her about Marlo’s Ford shrine and that he’s still waiting on Oliver to show up. Not even Andy and Sam had realized how manic Marlo had gotten about Ford when she went off her meds.

Nick radios Oliver again to make sure everything’s alright, and Ford impersonates him to buy himself some more time.

At the hospital, Chloe’s boyfriends are both sitting by her bed, waiting for her to wake up. Dov takes this quiet time to confess that he’s her boyfriend, and her hubby wonders why he hadn’t mentioned it before. The doctor comes in and tells them that Chloe isn’t doing so great, and that they’ll have to decide between letting them operate and potentially killing her, or waiting it out and potentially killing her. Dov takes the position of Rock, while Secret Hubby takes the position of Hard Place, and they bicker about which option is best.

Meanwhile, Ford’s lawyer has shown up at 15 Division – not to defend him, but to tell them that he is, in fact, insane. He apparently suffered a traumatic brain injury at the hands of his neighbor, and is now targeting the cops he believes are at fault for the past few weeks.

In a rare moment of family interaction, Steve Peck sidles up to his little sister and tells Gail to be careful out in the field, because their mom would be pissed if he let her die. Gail rolls her eyes and insists her mother wouldn’t notice either way. Suddenly Holly bustles in and shares a similar concern for Gail’s safety. She casually closes the space between them, But Gail gets stiff and scared, sharply shaking her head.

Holly is like, “Wait, really?” because the last thing she expected from Gail “Speaks-Her-Mind” Peck was gay panic. She looks at her like they’re going to have a long talk about their feelings later, but leaves it alone for now, since mostly she’s just worried about her.

Steve is a detective, Gail. Besides, he ships it.

At Ford’s house, the police find a hit list of specific names our resident crazy has compiled and the chief sends McNally and Swarek back to the station since their names are on the list. Not the type to hide in the face of danger, both of them protest, and storm down to the basement to make themselves as useful as possible before it’s time for them to retreat.

Detective Luke shows up at Marlo’s and the conversation sort of goes like this:

Nick: Sooo this is the shrine I mentioned…

Luke: What the actual fuck.

Sam: No, no, guys, seriously, this is totally normal. Marlo just had a tiny breakdown after marathoning Pretty Little Liars for three straight days, she’s back on her meds now, so it’s all good!

Luke: Meds?!

Andy: It’s just a manic episode! She built a shrine! It’s not like she was running people under with her car or poisoning their sports cream.

Luke: *Is not impressed.*

Back at the station, Ford’s brother is sort of defending him? But also agreeing that he’s off his rocker? It’s not the kind of stable character reference I would hope my brother would give if I ever went off the deep end and held a police officer hostage. He had apparently told Ford that he was cutting off all contact while he was in the hospital, which Ford apparently did not take very well.

Speak of the devil, Ford has taken Oliver to an abandoned church – you know, the kind they do community theatre in. He handcuffs Oliver to some scaffolding in the middle of the room and starts boobytrapping the doors. Oliver tries to talk to Ford and keep things light, but all that gets him is a punch in the face.

In their squad car, Chris is trying to comfort Gail. Gail, for once, is being optimistic. She wants to find Oliver so he can make his lame joke, she wants Chloe to wake up so she can call her names, and she wants to go get drunk at the Penny on Dov’s dime. She says they’ve had it pretty easy, but Chris gently reminds her of that time not too long ago that she was kidnapped herself. She shrugs and says she’s fine, and Chris says something quite profound: “When it’s dark enough, you can see the stars.” Obviously Holly is the stars in this metaphor, right? Right.

“So what you’re saying is, you ship it?”

At the station, Nick does his best to work with Marlo to interpret her murderboard and see what she knows, while Nick and Andy sort through all the papers she’s collected, like parking tickets she casually stole off of his car. Andy and Sam realize that a bunch of the tickets are around the same place, and they ask Ford’s brother if the location means anything to him. As luck would have it, their father had owned an abandoned church right around there.

Unfortunately, Papa Ford did not take his sons to the church for anything Jesus would approve of. Ford’s brother says that he moved on and got past it, but that Ford never did, turning to alcohol by 14 years old.

While his brother confesses this to Luke at the precinct, Ford is telling the same thing to Oliver. It’s why he’s furious that he was accused of being a pedophile, it’s why he snapped: it’s the one thing he hates more than anything in the world, and now people think it’s in him, too. He calls 911 from Oliver’s phone to speed up his friends’ arrival.

Chief gathers everyone together and gives them their assignments. Then he says one of my favorites of his concluding lines: “Everyone comes home today.” I love it most because it’s not “Everybody goes home today.” It’s everyone comes home.

It goes without saying that the Hit List Crew has no choice but to stay put.